Neowiz Games

Neowiz Games

Company History

Neowiz Games is a leading online game publisher in Korea, well known for the game portal Pmang.

Although Pmang started rather late compated to other leading game companies in Korea, such as NCSoft or Nexon, the game portal soon rose to recognition . Pmang offers online games, from hit online sport games to web board games.

The success of Pmang made Neowiz Games a well-known name in the Korean online gaming industry. Its capability as a game developer has also been recognized through FIFA online that was jointly developed by the worldly renowned Electronic Arts and Neowiz’s development studio Thingsoft. Pentavision, another development studio of Neowiz, also showed the future of the Korean PSP game with the successful launch of DJMax portable.

In 2007, Neowiz Games was created, separately from Neowiz Corporation in order to focus more on the servicing and publishing of games locally and abroad.

Neowiz launched its online game portal site Pmang in August 2003 and soon, in November the same year, the number of visitors reached the top among game portals. The first game on the site was Special Force, for which the beta test began in February 2004 and in 2006, it had a 12% market share with 11 million registered users.
In June 2004, the company started the beta test of the school action adventure game “Yogurting”, which in December was exported to the Japanese ‘Gungho Entertainment’, making it the largest scale game in the history of Korean games to be exported to Japan.

In 2005, Neowiz entered into strategic partnership with over eight studios, including Thingsoft, which later developed Warlord and Perfect KO, and Pentavision, developer of Duel Gate and S4 League.
In January 2006, Neowiz announced its entry into the Japanese game market and in February, it entered into contract with EA for the co-development and publishing of online games.

Neowiz achieved a record high performance with quarterly operating income of 10 trillion KRW in the first-quarter of 2006.
Neowiz Games renewed its contract for Special Force and continuously offers new online games to the many gamers in Korea and abroad: S4 League was unveiled in July 2007, Perfect KO in September 2007 , Duel Gate in October 2007 and Tenvi and Warlord in December 2007.
Meanwhile, in November 2007, it entered into a strategic partnership with GameOn , a Japanese gaming company, therefore reaffirming its position in Japan as well.
Neowiz Games also contributes to the society, with the program Magic Tree in January 2008, as part of the corporate social responsibility program.

Industry Know-How

Neowiz Games is in charge of publishing and developing online games.
The work that is involved in providing gamers, in Korea and overseas, can be summarized in a cycle, where developing and publishing games are continuously supported by a game management system, a quality assurance team and technical help.
Internal and external studios from NEOWIZ Games develop and select high quality contents. More than 20 games line-up have been chosen for the year of 2007, including worldly famous games co-developed with EA. The company then supports its choices by a good understanding of the local market, a successful marketing and operation know-how and a streamlined game update. Data is gathered from the continual analyses, in order to come up with strategic decisions concerning the games and their outsourcing. Throughout the entire life cycle, a comprehensive quality assurance team surveys the games, using more than a hundred test machines with various environments.
Technical support is provided in all kinds (Network, System & Database, and Security) and many years of proven commercialization know-how include a rich array of purchase options (item selling, game points, honor points, coupons, subscriptions, etc).

Neowiz Games Overseas

China - Neowiz Games China

Established in September 2007, the Chinese branch office of Neowiz Games is located in Shanghai. This office was first established in order to respond to the growing demand of online games in China and to be closer to the different companies in the country willing to work with Neowiz Games. Close to 20 people, both Korean and Chinese, are working at the Shanghai office in relation to business development and online game development. The Chinese branch mainly deals with graphic and design work involved in the making of games.

Japan - Game On

The work for the establishment of a branch office in Japan started in May 2003, with Neowiz Games overtaking iFactory, a Japanese internet service company. The success of Neowiz Japan started with the launching of Sayclub Japan, a service providing chatting as well as individual ‘mini-homepages’ and blogs. In 2006, Neowiz Japan started providing online game services as well, with the game R2Beat, the first game to be serviced in Japan directly by Neowiz. In 2007, Neowiz Games and Game On, an online game company among the top three in Japan, became strategic partners and Neowiz Games started in 2008 to operate its business through Game On.

USA - Neowiz Games Inc.

In order to complete its path towards globalization, Neowiz Games decided at the beginning of 2008 to establish a branch office in the United States. Already known in the American market for its cooperation with Electronic Arts, Neowiz Games will seek to approach its American customers even closer through this branch office. Located at the Silicon Valley, Neowiz US will service online games and web based games directly to the US market. It will also look over the development business of Hidden Path Entertainment (HPE), a local developer and a partner of Neowiz Games.

Neowiz Games

Arcade/Action

Duel GateDeveloper: Pentavision. Genre: Hybrid Action Strategy
This is a brand new action-based tactical game with Trading Card Game (TCG) features. More than a thousand collectable cards can be gathered by the players, to be used strategically in the game. The basic moves, such as ordering units, using spells and making the characters move, can be executed easily without using the mouse.

Funky FightersDeveloper: Everplant. Genre: Casual Action
This arcade action game is simple to control and easy to access. Players have a wide variety of choices for battle techniques; they can experience a one-on-one martial arts battle or long-range gun shooting. The dynamic map elements provide the best environments for strategic play, and futuristic settings along with semi-SF style characters entertain the players. Two play modes are possible: the PvP mode, supporting speedy and dynamic action during the progressive battle and the PvE mode, adding another great fun to game-play be competing with NPCs. Communities function with trading.

Perfect KODeveloper: Thingsoft. Genre: MMO Action
Perfect KO brings back to life Chun-Li and Ken from Street Fighter 2. This online battle game is possible individually as well as in teams and implements various types of martial arts, such as Kung-Fu, Karate and Tae-Kwon-Do. Dodging, combinations, team fighting, all these elements add a new fun to the game, with a strategic map to use well in order to avoid attack from the NPCs.

FPS/TPS

Developer: RedDuck. Genre: FPS
A.V.A is a military action FPS game where infantry soldiers put up a severe and realistic fight. It is recognized for its authentic artwork including graphics and expressions, great production and the fun it provides to its players. A.V.A was created by implementing Unreal Engine 3, worldly renown for its highly advanced technology.

Developer: Smilegate. Genre: FPS
Developed by Smilegate, a company known for its FPS games, Crossfire presents an in-depth dimension to the category of online FPS games. The realistic features make space for a fierce war between mercenary corporations. It provides the most basic and important characteristics of an online FPS game, including realistic hit impact, a strategic battle map and existing units and weapons. Players can fully customize their characters and enjoy the game through various modes (team match, clan match, death match and tutorial mode).
Crossfire is also known for taking in account the opinions of the players since its development stage and for offering the opportunity of a ghost match with invisible enemies.

S4LeagueDeveloper': Pentavision Genre: TPS
S4 League, created by NEOWIZ Games’ in-house studio Pentavision with great ambition, is a fusion genre TPS Game with a fresh feeling, combining the TPS genre and the action genre. The title of the game comes from the 4 S words defining this game: ‘stylish’ for the brilliant style of the game, eSper because it draws a supernatural world, ‘shooting’ for the type of game and ‘sports’ for the basic rules of this game.
It is evaluated as a game that will lead the next generation of online games, with its futuristic design and various types of super action.

RPG

WarlordDeveloper: Thingsoft. Genre: Action RPG
Warlord is proud to give the RPG players the satisfaction of a ‘1 vs. mass’ hardcore slashing on a single battle field. Despite the new genre, new users find it easy to control, and players will become more and more enthusiastic through strong initial combat impact, skills, combinations and new items. With wide scope on both Western and Eastern world views, Warlord attracts players from all over the world.

Sports/Racing

SluggerDeveloper: Wisecat. Genre: Sports
Slugger uses very cute characters with detailed action and animation that allow users to enjoy baseball all the while feeling familiar with the game and the whole ambiance of it. The speed and realistic baseball tactics and strategies provide the same pleasure and fun as in a real game. Being the only baseball game using mouse clicks, players find it easier to control.